Advocate Days & Other Stories
Mark Thompson

What does it mean to be an advocate? To become a person who speaks out and defends a cause? In this collection of moving essays, longtime journalist Mark Thompson charts his own journey of becoming both a witness and participant in the gay liberation movement. He then goes on to describe other advocates of personal and political freedom he has known and how these friendships further informed his activism.

His story begins in 1968 when, as a curious teenager in the throes of coming out, he accidentally discovers one of the first issues of The Advocate, a tiny Los Angeles newsletter that would grow into the gay movement’s most important national journal of record. Little did he know that only in a few more years he’d be working for the publication—first as an enterprising young writer and then, after nearly two decades, as its Senior and Cultural Editor.

Filled with historic eye-witness accounts of a movement and its primary chronicle always in flux, as well as profiles of artists and activists who have made a difference, Advocate Days and Other Stories is more than the sum of its parts. Taken together, these keenly observed tales offer a stirring testament to the significance of living a life graced with meaning and purpose.

ISBN: 978-1-60864-015-7 (hardcover)
978-1-60864-016-4 (paperback)
180 pages, 5.5x8.5

Mark Thompson is a native son of California’s scenic Monterey Peninsula. In the early 1970s he moved to San Francisco to attend college and study journalism. Soon caught up in the dramatic struggles of the early gay rights movement, Thompson lost no time in putting to work his talent in telling a good story. Today, he is the author of several books on gay culture and history, including the internationally acclaimed Gay Spirit. A photographer as well, a collection of Thompson’s images, “Fellow Travelers,” has been exhibited nationally. He lives in Los Angeles with his life partner of many years, Episcopal priest and author Malcolm Boyd.